The Fragile Republic 53scanty crops of sugar and tobacco.
58
The Republic stood on the
threshhold of a new experience, its first civil war as a sovereign
nation. Behind it lay the long years of struggle against Spain.
Yet little had changed. Life for the guajiro was still el tiempo
muerto and la zafra. The American soldiers had come and
gone. With Estrada Palma there had been peace for awhile,
and life was a little easier; but now the men talked war and
unearthed rifles and cartridges. What had become of the
military heroes, the patriot statesmen of the war with Spain?
The answer was that they were the same men they had
always been, the products of a system of government that ex
ploited the political ignorance of the people. They were the
children of a society and an economy that had unevenly
distributed its rewards for three hundred years and showed
little evidence of changing. Without any experience in the
peaceful accommodation of conflicting interests, seldom with
out any motive other than self-satisfaction, Cuba's popular
politicians moved their country toward civil war. Under the
circumstances, it was unreasonable to hope that the United
States would stand aloof. Just as surely as revolt was the
product of Cuba's failure to develop responsible party govern
ment, so too was American intervention a predictable product
of general insurrection. The great imponderable was the
character such intervention would take.
- The picture of Cuba circa 1898-1906 is drawn from the following
works: Wyatt MacGaffey and Clifford R. Barnett, Cuba (New Haven,
Conn., 1962); Lowry Nelson, Rural Cuba (Minneapolis, 1950); Robert
Freeman Smith (ed.), Background to Revolution: The Development of
Modern Cuba (New York, 1966); Gonzalo de Quesada, Cuba (Wash
ington, 1905); Jose R. Alvarez Diaz et al., Un estudio sobre Cuba:
colonia—republica—experimento socialista (Miami, Fla., 1963); Ray
mond Leslie Buell et al., Problems of the New Cuba, A Report by the
Commission on Cuban Affairs (New York, 1935).
Of particular value among works by Americans in this era are Irene
Wright, Cuba (New York, 1910) and Edward F, Atkins, Sixty Years
in Cuba (Cambridge, Mass., 1926). Miss Wright, as a reporter for
Diario del la Marina (Havana) and agricultural agent, was a ten year